


my life before was tragic

by SafelyCapricious



Series: i put a spell on you [10]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, F/M, Magical Tattoos, Miscommunication
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-30
Updated: 2017-03-30
Packaged: 2018-10-12 20:02:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10498473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SafelyCapricious/pseuds/SafelyCapricious
Summary: Things do not go according to anyone's plan, Grant wants to hurt someone and Jemma cries.The modern-magic AU





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt 'What if you stayed this time?' by Erika over on tumblr. I kind of shoehorned it in, but I think it fits. 
> 
> Apologies, as always, for the delay. Life is...life. I hope some of you are still interested and will be pleased with this newest addition. 
> 
> Needless to say, this is not yet the end.
> 
> Minimally edited because I hate editing and hope if anything is glaring one of you will let me know.
> 
> And I'm sorry.

The circle is almost complete when he walks into the room. The collar of his untreated cotton shirt is damp and he smells faintly of the herbs they’d given him in a packet to bathe with before coming. Trip waves him forward towards the thin matt in the center of the circle and he goes, careful not to smudge any of the magic lines as he steps across and settles down. The matt isn’t usually included, but he and Jemma will have to lie there for quite some time, and it’s kind of her friends to include it – though not surprising.

He feels his breath catch in his throat when Jemma enters through the same door he’d come in. Her untreated cotton shirt is exactly the same as his, but her wet hair has left rivulets down her skin that the shirt sticks to.

She settles next to him and he’s so entranced by her warmth that he doesn’t realize he’s ignoring the directions until she smiles and helps him lie back. He wants to curl around her but he can’t – the pressure of her arm against his and her fingers entwined with his will have to do for now.

 Time seems to jump for a moment, movement and magic happening around them, and then he feels the binding take hold and – no.

No!

It’s _all_ wrong!

He’d known they’d favor her but – he can feel the cords twisting around him and soon he can’t feel the heat of Jemma at his side and she’s leaning over him and frowning, sadly. “I’m sorry, Grant, did you think we’d actually let you carry on?" 

He can’t speak as they steal the magic from him and it hurts and hurts and hurts –

He sits up with a gasp, fingers clenched white around his sheets. The room is grey – the sun hasn’t risen yet and everything has that stillness between night and day and he is covered with sweat.

He runs a hand over his face and reaches for the water he left by his bed but it’s empty and with a snarl he kicks off his sheet and stalks out of his bedroom.

It’s been almost a month since they performed the spell to remove Christian’s (and his parent’s) ability to threaten anyone. It’s been almost a month since he’s seen Jemma anywhere but his dreams.

He pads silently down his hallway, ignoring the new lightning the cracks the paint and has burned the floors as he heads into the kitchen. He doesn’t let himself look at the chairs by the counter – heading straight to the sink and floating a glass as he does.

The water is cool, sliding down his throat, and he closes his eyes and reflexively tries to check on Jemma before he’s stabbed with the fact that he can’t – not anymore. The bond between their tattoos had finally faded to nonexistence nine days ago.

The dreams have gotten worse, since then.

He has spells that could take them away, of course, but none to control _what_ he dreams and so it would just be dark and rest and silence and –

He’d rather dream of Jemma actually ripping his heart out a thousand times than not have her there at all. 

Not, of course, that he doesn’t think of her a thousand times a day already. Sometimes he can direct his thoughts to the kiss or – or before. Mostly he sees her standing there, smiling, her spell complete and telling him that it’s sorted and it’s time for him to leave. Mostly it’s him remembering how he almost _didn’t_ , how he almost refused and took her and – but then he’d looked and seen the tense line of her friends, knowing what he was thinking, and the trusting smile she was giving him and –

She looked at him like he was better than he was, and somehow it made him want to pretend to be what she saw. So he’d left – he’d kissed her hand because he couldn’t not, and he’d left.

And he hasn’t seen her since.

He knows that he won’t be able to walk away twice, not peaceably.

A sharp spike against his wards shatters his thoughts and he puts his glass in the sink and waves a hand so his window shows him where it came from. For a moment he thinks it’s Jemma – but then his spell focuses in and he sees it’s her friend, the small angry Skye, poking at his wards and stomping her feet. He instinctively reaches for Jemma before he again remembers the lack of connection.

With a wave of his hand the wards let her through and he heads towards the front door. She gets there before him – she must have run – and is already pounding on the door when he opens it and leans against the frame. 

“What.”

“You asshole,” she snarls, lips curled back in a way that reminds him of his dragon.

His dragon bares its own fangs and he arches an eyebrow.

She clearly doesn’t need permission to continue, though he’s impressed with her bravery as she jams a finger into his chest. His magic burns her and she pulls back with a hiss but it doesn’t seem to stop her tirade. “You’re such an asshole!” she says, and then, talking a mile a minute she turns away from him, pacing and ranting. He only catches bits and pieces until he hears “Jemma’s hurt and how –“ and suddenly he’s out of his doorway and gripping her upper arms with a punishing grip.

“Jemma’s hurt?” his voice is terribly soft, shaking the house under them slightly. “Who hurt her? Where is she?” She blinks up at him, stunned, and doesn’t respond immediately, so he shakes her and asks the most important question. “Where is she?”

Her lips start to curl into a smirk and if she wasn’t the easiest source of information now he’d kill her but then she says, “her house,” and he’s summoned a jacket and is stepping into a materialized car before she’s finished catching her balance from his releasing her. He doesn’t bother to wonder if she has the common sense to leave his property before his wards kick her out – he knows she doesn’t.

The drive passes in a second, his car sliding into one of the parking places behind the magic shop. The staircase in the back that leads straight to her apartment is warded so strongly he can taste the ozone, but it doesn’t so much as tingle when he steps onto it, her wards accepting him easily and he has to wonder why she hasn’t changed that yet but it doesn’t matter because she’s _hurt_.

The door opens before he gets to it and there she is. He can’t immediately see any damage, she’s wearing a large sweater over leggings and she could be hiding wounds under it but her kitten is hissing at him from her revealed collarbone and her eyes are red and wide and she only manages to say, “Wh—Grant?” before he has her face cradled in his hands as his magic searches hers.

He couldn’t taste her, before, the wards on the doorway hiding her but as he steps her backwards into her house he can roll her around his mouth and she’s sour apples and warm bread and the astringent tint of witch-hazel and he’ll kill whoever put that bitterness in her. “Where are you hurt? Who hurt you?” he asks, eyes searching her face and she just stares back up at him, her fingers having come up to lightly curl around his wrists where he’s cradling her face. “I’ll kill them,” he adds, conversationally as she keeps staring.

She wets her lips and his gaze drops before he tears it back up to her face. “Grant,” she says, voice shaking and he doesn’t know who did this to her but it’s clearly not an immediate threat so he pulls her into his chest and kisses the top of her head and holds her.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. I’ve got you. It’s okay.” Her hair smells like peaches and he thinks he’d be happy to die here, but not before he kills whoever hurt her.

 

***

 

Jemma is going to kill Skye. Or kiss her.

She’s a little torn, to be honest.

Grant’s arms are warm and solid around her and his magic feels like a down comforter wrapped securely around her. His chest is bare, she can see, pressed against him as she is, and his jacket is only zipped up halfway.

He’s not wearing any shoes.

_What_ did Skye tell him?

Maybe it wasn’t Skye but – no, the other woman had made an excuse about needed to get ice cream (clearly a lie since Jemma had purchased the entire selection the last time she’d gone shopping and even she couldn’t eat her own weight in ice cream in three days) and had vanished only half an hour before.

 Why was he here?

 That was a good question. Much better than her first reaction of stunned silence.

“Why,” she asks, finally, wincing at how weak her voice sounds in her own ears, “are you here?”

“Someone hurt you,” he says, conversationally, like it should be obvious, like it’s any sort of answer.

 Her arms, hanging limply from where they’d fallen after his hands had left his face, curl around him, under the jacket, while her brain tries to muddle through the logic of what he’s said since he arrived.

Because of course someone hurt her.

He hurt her.

He hurt her and wasn’t that what he wanted? Or no, probably he didn’t want to hurt her, he probably didn’t even _care_ enough to hurt her – but he’d gotten his solution and whatever else he’d wanted from her so she hadn’t mattered anymore and –

“Shh, it’s okay, love, I’ve got you.”

She’s crying into his chest and the next thing she knows they’re on her sad worn down couch, her curled up in his lap and sobbing and his magic is pressing warm comforting into her skin. She wants to ask why he’s there – if there’s something else he needs – but more than that she wants to ask him to stay. What if you stayed this time, she thinks at him, but she doubts she has the strength to say it and instead she cries more about him in the comfort of his arms.

“Who is it, Jemma?” he asks, once her sobs have settled into small sniffles and silent misery, “Who hurt you?”

“You,” she says, because she’s tired and weary and feels warm for the first time since she realized he wasn’t coming back. He’d left after the ritual like nothing was wrong, with a kiss on her hand and a smirk and she’d smiled and known he would be back the next day or – if he’d gotten involved in one of his projects, a few days later but

 He never came.

No one had seen him around town, paying attention to some other woman, so there was that but –

The first week was fine. After the second people started to give her looks. By the third they’d started on comments and pats on her back about how she was a nice young woman and he’d done this sort of thing before.

She hadn’t believed it.

She _hadn’t_.

But he’d never come and –

“You,” she repeats into the skin of his throat, refusing to move, “you’re the one who hurt me.”

**Author's Note:**

> My writing tumblr can be found [here](http://capriciouswrites.tumblr.com/)! Come say hi and give me a prompt.


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